Ratko Mladic, the Man Behind Srebrenica Massacre, Dies at 84
Ratko Mladic represented the horrors of the Bosnian war. He was convicted of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre. He died in detention at The Hague.
More than three decades after the conclusion of the Bosnian war, the name Ratko Mladic continues to be synonymous with the brutal genocide that occurred in the small town of Srebrenica. As the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, Mladic was directly responsible for the slaughter of over 8,300 Muslim men and boys in the nearby village of Potocari in July 1995.
This horrific act was carried out under Mladic's orders, as confirmed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2017. Srebrenica remains the single largest mass killing in Europe since World War II.
Mladic was also held accountable for the years-long siege of Sarajevo, which resulted in the deaths of around 11,000 civilians, including more than 1,600 children. Despite claiming that he only targeted military objectives, Mladic's actions and intercepted communications suggest that civilian facilities and residential areas were deliberately attacked as well. The war in Bosnia claimed around 100,000 lives in total, with half of the population displaced from their homes.
Mladic, who was born in eastern Bosnia in 1943, initially served in the Yugoslav army. However, his allegiance shifted after the Croatian war in 1991, when he became the commander of the 9th Corps in the Croatian city of Knin. This marked a significant change in his career, as he began organizing Serb militias and supporting their fight against Croatian independence. In 1992, he took on a similar role in Bosnia, becoming the commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb forces.
Throughout his career, Mladic maintained that he only targeted military objectives. However, numerous reports and intercepted communications indicate that he deliberately attacked civilian facilities and residential areas. He consistently denied any responsibility for the crimes committed under his command and saw himself as an avenger for centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans.
For Mladic, Bosniaks, who today refer to themselves as Bosniaks, were seen as direct descendants of the Turks, and he referred to them simply as "the Turks" in front of his soldiers.
Written by urgent.news from Tempo.co English's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
